Forensic Science: Crime on File #19: Albert Fish
Albert Fish, the model, at least in part, for Thomas Harris's fictional killer Hannibal Lecter - is perhaps the most bewildering of all serial killers. At the time of his arrest in 1934 he was sixty-four years old, a slightly built, mildly-mannered old man with grey hair and a shabby suit, as innocuous-looking as individual as one could hope to meet. However, under the placid exterior there lurked a man of extraordinary violence; according to psychiatrists, Fish had tried and enjoyed every perversion known to humanity, including eating the flesh of young children he had savagely tortured and murdered.
Braggart
Just how many children this seemingly benevolent old man killed, we will never know. There are no more than four whose deaths can certainly be attributed to Fish, though at least a dozen killings, plus a large number of rapes, seem probable. Fish, himself - an early example of the serial killer as braggart - claimed to have killed hundreds, with at least one murder in every state. The psychiatrist who examined him most closely believed that Fish probably committed at least a hundred rapes.
So what kind of background produced this monster? Albert Fish was born on May 19, 1870. His father Randall Fish was a boat captain, operating on the Potomac River. Albert's given name was Hamilton Fish, apparently in honor of a family link with Washington's eminent Hamilton family. So this was a respectable. relatively well-off world that Albert Fish was born into. All this changed however, when his father died in 1875. His mother had to find a job and put Albert, age five, into an orphanage. It was there, in response to teasing from the other boys, that he started to call himself Albert. More seriously, it was there that he acquired a lifelong taste for sadomasochism, after the regular bare-bottom whippings he received. He became a persistent bed-wetter who regularly ran away from the orphanage. When he was nine, his mother removed him.
Drifter
Albert left school at 15. He soon found out he as a very able painter and decorator and he followed this trade for the rest of his life, drifting from town to town as he did so. By 1898 he had married, settled in New York, and fathered 6 children. Fish himself claimed that he committed his first murder during this period, killing a man in Delaware in 1910. However, most people, including his children, dated his descent into madness from the time his wife left him, running off with a boarder in 1917. Thereafter, he appeared to suffer from hallucinations: he would take the children to a sumer house in Westchester where he would climb a hill, shake his fist at the sky and declare himself to be Christ, before asking his children to beat him on the buttocks. He became obsessed with pain, driving needles into himself and setting himself on fire. Eventually his oldest son had had enough of his father's demented behavior and threw him out of the family house.
Fish was regularly arrested, sometimes for vagrancy, sometimes for petty theft and sometimes for indulging in one of his favorite perversions, sending obscene letters to women. Each time he would be examined, pronounced peculiar but harmless, and tossed back into the community. Exactly how many murders and rapes he committed during the 1920s and early 1930s we will never know.
However, it was one case in particular that ensured both his notoriety and his downfall. At the beginning of June, 1928 he notices an advertisement in the newspaper from one Edward Budd, and 18-year-old looking for a job in the countryside. Fish answered the advert, arriving at the impoverished Budd household in the guise of Frank Howard, a farmer from Long Island who was looking for a willing worker. Despite "Mr. Howard's" rather shabby appearance, he was a well-spoken man and the Budd family were happy to believe in his as a benefactor, especially when he handed out dollar bills to the other children. On meeting the rest of the family, Fish decided against abducting the burley Edward and instead focused his attention on 12-year-old Grace. He persuaded the family to let him take her to a children's party that his sister was holding.
That was the last the family saw of her. Fish took Grace to a deserted summer house in Westchester. There he strangled her, dismembered her body and over a period of 9 days, ate as much of her body as he could, before burying her bones behind the house.
A huge manhunt was launched without success. It was only the determination of one man, Detective Will King, that kept the case alive. Even so, he might have never have got his man if Fish had not succumbed to the urge to brag about his crime. In 1934, he sent the Budds a letter telling them exactly what had happened to their daughter. This vile act led to his downfall. The envelope Fish used had a distinctive logo that eventually led Detective King to a New York flophouse. There he finally came face to face with Albert Fish. On being challenged, Fish lunged at King with a straight razor but King overpowered him and arrested him.
On arrest, Fish began an extraordinary, rambling, obscene confession. As well as the Grace Budd murder, he was also responsible for the killings of 4-year-old Billy Gaffney in 1929 and 5-year-old Francis McDonnell in 1934. The only question was whether his defense of not guilty by reason of insanity would be accepted. Fish was, as several psychiatrists pronounced, fairly obviously mad.
The jury, eager for his heinous crimes to be punished, rejected the insanity defense and found Fish guilty. He was sentenced to death by electrocution, a fate he positively relished. He was executed at Sing Sing Prison on January 16, 1936. It took two attempts to kill him. Legend has it that the electric chair failed the first time due to being short circuited but the larges number of nails the Fish had embedded in his body over the years.
Albert Fish, the model, at least in part, for Thomas Harris's fictional killer Hannibal Lecter - is perhaps the most bewildering of all serial killers. At the time of his arrest in 1934 he was sixty-four years old, a slightly built, mildly-mannered old man with grey hair and a shabby suit, as innocuous-looking as individual as one could hope to meet. However, under the placid exterior there lurked a man of extraordinary violence; according to psychiatrists, Fish had tried and enjoyed every perversion known to humanity, including eating the flesh of young children he had savagely tortured and murdered.
Braggart
Just how many children this seemingly benevolent old man killed, we will never know. There are no more than four whose deaths can certainly be attributed to Fish, though at least a dozen killings, plus a large number of rapes, seem probable. Fish, himself - an early example of the serial killer as braggart - claimed to have killed hundreds, with at least one murder in every state. The psychiatrist who examined him most closely believed that Fish probably committed at least a hundred rapes.
So what kind of background produced this monster? Albert Fish was born on May 19, 1870. His father Randall Fish was a boat captain, operating on the Potomac River. Albert's given name was Hamilton Fish, apparently in honor of a family link with Washington's eminent Hamilton family. So this was a respectable. relatively well-off world that Albert Fish was born into. All this changed however, when his father died in 1875. His mother had to find a job and put Albert, age five, into an orphanage. It was there, in response to teasing from the other boys, that he started to call himself Albert. More seriously, it was there that he acquired a lifelong taste for sadomasochism, after the regular bare-bottom whippings he received. He became a persistent bed-wetter who regularly ran away from the orphanage. When he was nine, his mother removed him.
Drifter
Albert left school at 15. He soon found out he as a very able painter and decorator and he followed this trade for the rest of his life, drifting from town to town as he did so. By 1898 he had married, settled in New York, and fathered 6 children. Fish himself claimed that he committed his first murder during this period, killing a man in Delaware in 1910. However, most people, including his children, dated his descent into madness from the time his wife left him, running off with a boarder in 1917. Thereafter, he appeared to suffer from hallucinations: he would take the children to a sumer house in Westchester where he would climb a hill, shake his fist at the sky and declare himself to be Christ, before asking his children to beat him on the buttocks. He became obsessed with pain, driving needles into himself and setting himself on fire. Eventually his oldest son had had enough of his father's demented behavior and threw him out of the family house.
Fish was regularly arrested, sometimes for vagrancy, sometimes for petty theft and sometimes for indulging in one of his favorite perversions, sending obscene letters to women. Each time he would be examined, pronounced peculiar but harmless, and tossed back into the community. Exactly how many murders and rapes he committed during the 1920s and early 1930s we will never know.
However, it was one case in particular that ensured both his notoriety and his downfall. At the beginning of June, 1928 he notices an advertisement in the newspaper from one Edward Budd, and 18-year-old looking for a job in the countryside. Fish answered the advert, arriving at the impoverished Budd household in the guise of Frank Howard, a farmer from Long Island who was looking for a willing worker. Despite "Mr. Howard's" rather shabby appearance, he was a well-spoken man and the Budd family were happy to believe in his as a benefactor, especially when he handed out dollar bills to the other children. On meeting the rest of the family, Fish decided against abducting the burley Edward and instead focused his attention on 12-year-old Grace. He persuaded the family to let him take her to a children's party that his sister was holding.
That was the last the family saw of her. Fish took Grace to a deserted summer house in Westchester. There he strangled her, dismembered her body and over a period of 9 days, ate as much of her body as he could, before burying her bones behind the house.
A huge manhunt was launched without success. It was only the determination of one man, Detective Will King, that kept the case alive. Even so, he might have never have got his man if Fish had not succumbed to the urge to brag about his crime. In 1934, he sent the Budds a letter telling them exactly what had happened to their daughter. This vile act led to his downfall. The envelope Fish used had a distinctive logo that eventually led Detective King to a New York flophouse. There he finally came face to face with Albert Fish. On being challenged, Fish lunged at King with a straight razor but King overpowered him and arrested him.
On arrest, Fish began an extraordinary, rambling, obscene confession. As well as the Grace Budd murder, he was also responsible for the killings of 4-year-old Billy Gaffney in 1929 and 5-year-old Francis McDonnell in 1934. The only question was whether his defense of not guilty by reason of insanity would be accepted. Fish was, as several psychiatrists pronounced, fairly obviously mad.
The jury, eager for his heinous crimes to be punished, rejected the insanity defense and found Fish guilty. He was sentenced to death by electrocution, a fate he positively relished. He was executed at Sing Sing Prison on January 16, 1936. It took two attempts to kill him. Legend has it that the electric chair failed the first time due to being short circuited but the larges number of nails the Fish had embedded in his body over the years.